


The Signet of His Lords

by queenlua



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Almyra (Fire Emblem), Backstory, Gen, If you only read one work by me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-03-24
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:13:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23294536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenlua/pseuds/queenlua
Summary: There are a hundred lessons the queen wants to teach her son before he leaves her.Pre-game, Almyra.
Relationships: Claude von Riegan & Claude von Riegan's Mother
Comments: 49
Kudos: 192





	The Signet of His Lords

**Author's Note:**

> (Tiana is the name of Claude's mom, as per the Ashen Wolves DLC; Khalid is Claude's Almyran name, as per an [interview](https://www.thegamer.com/fire-emblem-three-houses-claude-real-name/) with the 3H writers.)

This is how you greet someone in Fódlan, his mother tells him, holding out her hand for a shake. Do not kiss their cheeks, not even if you are close friends. And stand closer than is comfortable, when you talk to strangers, or else you will seem aloof.

Khalid tries it. The gesture feels stiff and strange. “Stronger, Khalid,” she says, tightening her grip. “A weak handshake is the sign of weak man.”

Khalid starts laughing, because, what a _ridiculous_ supposition. Surely in Fódlan they have something besides this silly ritual to test one’s strength? But his mother scowls, and says, you’re not taking this seriously, Khalid, and tells him to try again.

This is the first time they have spoken in a week. Which is not so unusual; Tiana is a busy queen, with a hundred other things to attend to besides her son. He has had sixteen years to become well-used to her tactful neglect.

But the silence between them was the silence after a storm, staticky and tense. The silence between them was deliberate. Because a week ago, he’d answered a letter from Fódlan, a letter that his mother had never wanted him to read. When she found out, her shouts had shaken the palace walls, and for the week thereafter, none but the most desperate courtiers ventured near Queen Tiana. Storm, then silence. _You spit in my eye,_ she’d shouted, _after all I’ve done, after all_ you’ve _done—_

But they are not talking about the letter now.

They are talking about dancing.

This is how you dance in Fódlan, she says, putting a hand on Khalid’s shoulder and leading him around the room with a three-step gait. He trips over his mother’s toes once, twice, but no more than that. He’s always been a quick learner. They only tour the ballroom once, before it starts to bore him: “Is this all there is to it?”

Tiana’s eyes brighten at once. “Hardly,” she says, with a scoffing laugh, “let me show you some _real_ dancing now."

With a flick of her wrist, she sends her son in a quick spin around her. He's surprised at how easy it is to follow; his feet haven't stuttered a beat even though he didn’t see how Tiana did it at all. "Again," he says, watching closely this time, and he watches two more times before he tries it himself, sending his mom spinning around him.

"Good," she says, smiling. It’s been a while since he’s seen the Lioness of Samandi smile. He smiles too.

She shows him another move, then another, and he’s starting to like this kind of dancing. It’s not as loose or wild as Almyran dancing, but weaving flourishes into this lilting beat has a thrill all its own.

She tries to show him another move, but something goes wrong; Khalid reaches for a hand where there isn’t one, his mother stumbles, and they lose the beat.

“Sorry, my bad,” he says.

But his mother isn’t listening; she’s scowling and shuffling her feet and grasping at the air. “Hold on,” she says, “if I could just...”

He watches her try the gesture again. Then she pulls him into it, and they try it together, but it still doesn’t make sense, and they trip over each other again.

“The men lead this dance, you know,” she mutters, “so I never learned that part of it properly.”

Khalid blinks. He knows that his mom lived in Fódlan a lifetime ago, but still—he finds it hard to imagine a version of her who ever _followed_ in anything.

“Let’s just keep practicing the other moves,” he says, “I’m not done learning those.”

So they do. But her eyes are dim and she’s stern again, more like the distant queen she’s always been. More like the woman he’d confronted just a week ago, when he said, I _am_ meeting my grandfather, actually, and I don’t care for your trying to answer on my behalf, and how many of these letters have you kept from me?

In his head he’d imagined it as a grand moment. It was the sort of speech he’d give to some scheming half-rate rival, right before calling in the palace guard— _the game’s up, my friend_. Stupid, stupid. His mother was a million things, but none of them were half-rate. Even with his sixteen years’ worth of armor, her words could still cut like knives—

But they are not talking about the letter now, even though they should.

They are talking about appearances.

This is how you wear your hair in Fódlan, she says, brushing his hair back and slicking it down with oil. When she’s halfway finished, Khalid catches a glimpse in the mirror, and he yelps, twisting away in indignation. “No way,” he says, mussing his hair back into something respectable, and laughing, because _really_ : “I’m not wearing my hair like _that_ , it looks like a—like there’s a _bowl_ on my head or something.”

“And _that_ looks like there’s a rat’s nest on your head. With a little rat’s tail,” she adds, tapping his braid.

“The braid stays put,” Khalid insists, flinching away. “Look, I get wanting to—blend in, I guess, but isn’t it enough to dance right and eat right and shake hands right?”

“It wasn’t,” Tiana answers, and Khalid hears something catch in her breath. “It isn’t,” she corrects.

But the slip is there, and Khalid hears it. He holds his tongue a moment, two. His mother’s posture is stiff, so stiff, and her eyes _dare_ him to speak.

“So which one did you mess up?” Khalid ventures. “The dancing or the handshakes?”

He expects her to snap at him. He _wants_ her to, he realizes, when she instead sighs and shakes her head. She lets the hairbrush fall onto the dressing table. “It’s been two decades, you know,” she says. “Fashions change. I may not even know what I’m talking about any more. Wear your hair however.”

She slinks away. Khalid doesn’t think he’s ever seen her slink in his whole life. He feels a twinge that should be triumph, but it’s all twisted, and he winds up spending the rest of the day at the archery field, trying to untwist the knot with every sure shot.

But at least that’ll be the end of the lessons, he hopes. Tiana is a busy queen, with a hundred other things to attend to besides her son. Let her attend them. He’ll be attending Riegan matters soon enough.

But Tiana is suddenly not-so-busy, it seems. Funny, that. Suddenly she’s got time to pull him aside for meals (and criticize his table manners), and to go out to the stables with him (and coach him on how the Fódlanese ride). The incessant lessons continue. This is how you give a gift in Leicester, she says. This is how you greet a duke. This is how you attend an opera.

This is how you pretend there wasn’t a fight. This is how you feign all is well, all is as planned, nothing is wrong and you were never wrong—

Khalid doesn’t say that, of course. They are still not talking about the letter. They are only talking manners.

But there’s only so many times Khalid can hear all these little nits, only so many times he can hear _you’re holding your fork wrong_. So when Tiana says _that_ , one cool evening, when it’s just them eating dinner, Khalid finally sighs and sets his silverware down. “Isn’t this a little much? The Fódlanese are just _people_ , same as anywhere else. You act like I’m walking into a den of lions.”

“Where do you think the Lioness of Samandi came from?” Tiana asks. She is smiling, but the smile doesn’t reach her eyes.

“Well. It can’t be any worse than _Almyra’s_ been.”

Tiana flinches. Khalid fliches too. He didn’t mean to sound so churlish, but he did, and Tiana hears it, and her face tightens dangerously: “And what do you mean by that, Khalid?”

“I mean Raza Rajavi nearly killed me _twice_ and you didn’t lift a finger,” he snaps. And alright, maybe he is angry. He didn’t realize it, until that second, and now he can’t stop being angry, can’t stop speaking; he drops his silverware and pushes back from the table: “That’s when I could’ve used these lessons, mom. How to keep Raza from wanting to kill me in the first place, and how to fight off all the other cousins and half-rate princes, and how not to piss anyone off when you’re holding court, and why everyone hated me in the first place. So you’re telling me all this _now_? No one’s going to try and assassinate me over how I hold a _fork_ , and I figured out the rest fine.”

For a very long moment Tiana is silent: the silence before a storm. The only kind of silence there ever is between them.

“You think you’re so clever,” she hisses at last, “you’ve _always_ thought you’re so clever—” Then a light passes over her face, something like revelation, or maybe resignation. “Fine,” she says. “Fine, Khalid. You’ve survived fine so far. Figure it out again. Goddess protect you.”

And she pushes away from the table too, and storms off, her footsteps echoing like distant thunder.

Fine, Khalid thinks. Thank the gods, he thinks.

He prepares on his own after that. He packs his bags. He reads some Leicester books in the palace library: old journals, grammars, histories, financial records. And at last, the return-letter arrives from Riegan, with everything he’s been desperate for: a date, a meeting-place, and a profusion of gratitude.

 _We could not be more excited to welcome you as our grandson_ , Khalid reads, running his finger over the sentence twice. It’s political, he knows it’s all political, everything in the whole world is political. But it _sounds_ nice. And the handwriting is nice. The paper’s even nice, thick and fine-grained.

He’s got that letter in his pocket, on the day of his departure. Even as the clouds hover dark and low above him, threatening thunder, he touches the paper in his pocket and feels fearless.

“I don’t see any lightning yet,” one of the corpsmen calls out behind him, fiddling with one of the straps on his wyvern’s halter. “So let’s just fly and see how it goes.”

Khalid grins. The Immortal Corps really are as dauntless as people say. They’ll make for some fun escorts.

Not that there’s _that_ much of a risk, really, on such a straightforward route—skirt the mountains, go north, and meet Riegan’s horsemen at the Eamon Gap, easy. It’s obscure, little-traveled, and far safer than venturing across the Throat. Normally Khalid would just travel it on his own—but Duke Oswald had insisted in his letter, _go no place unguarded_ , and he’d hate to disappoint Grandpa before even meeting the guy.

One of the corpsmen saddles his wyvern, and the wyvern roars in joyous answer—the Immortal’s wyverns are every bit as daring as the humans who ride them. One by one, they saddle up, and the chorus of grunts and wyvern-shrieks swells around him.

For a moment, Khalid closes his eyes, and tries to imagine what it’ll be like in Riegan. Horses neighing, maybe, instead of the wyvernsong. And there’ll be green, so much green—all the traveler’s journals exult it, the green hills for miles and trees as tall as temples and the ivy growing gorgeous over everything. He opens his eyes again, and sighs to himself. He’ll miss these wyverns, he thinks, and the canyons here. But with his hand on the letter in his pocket, he can’t think of much else to miss.

That’s when he dares a last look behind him—and sees his mother running toward him.

Khalid thinks about shouting _hyah_ , thinks about just setting off, thinks about just leaving her and whatever pitiful goodbye she’s got. But something holds him back, just a second too long, and by then the other guards have seen her, too, so it’s too late to leave.

“Khalid,” she calls. She’s holding a jacket, a heavy black thing of Fódlanese design. “It’s very cold in Leicester,” she says, “much colder than here. Put this on. And be careful—don’t take off that jacket until you’ve arrived, or you’ll be shivering once you’re there.”

Khalid eyes the jacket dubiously. It isn’t really his style. Well—isn’t really the style he _imagines_ he’ll have. He knows he’ll be leaving behind his headbands and his bright scarves. But surely not _all_ Fódlanese clothes are as drab and heavy as this thing.

But he recognizes it as the peace offering it is, and eases it on his shoulders obligingly. “Thanks, mom,” he manages. Tiana nods stiffly. It’s strange, talking with the Corps all hovering around them, rapt at attention as they always are. Khalid could ask for a moment alone, if he wanted to. He could say something more.

But the moment passes, and the wind picks up, too perfect and steady a breeze to ignore. _Hyah!_ Khalid shouts, and a dozen cries rise around him, and they’re off, riding the wind.

After a few days, a corpsman jokes to Khalid: a devil must be pushing us along.

Khalid’s not sure if he’s referring to the strong southerly wind they’ve been riding, or to Khalid’s own frenetic pace. Something about their departure—those low dark clouds, or maybe the last look from his mother—unsettled Khalid, and he wants to be _settled_ , wants to be in Riegan already, wants to be _there_. He wants to start being Claude von Riegan, whoever that’ll end up being. He wants to take off this damn jacket—but the discordant note in his mom’s voice, _don’t take it off until you’ve arrived_ , rings in his ears like a mummer’s curse, every time he thinks about it. So the only time he takes it off is to sleep, and when he sleeps, he sleeps on top of it as though to guard it. Gods, he thinks, she’s really in my head.

When he finally arrives in Riegan, it’s late enough that the Duke is already asleep, so he’s led to his own chambers without ceremony.

Alone, at last. Claude von Riegan, at last.

He falls facefirst onto his bed, exhausted, exhilarated, fully-clothed. He rubs his eyes, and starts to pull off the stupid jacket—then pauses. Why had his mother been so insistent that he wear this thing? Traveling through Riegan the past few days, it seemed to Khalid that if anything, their nights were _warmer_ than Almyra’s. And even if it _were_ cold, it wasn’t like he didn’t have cloaks of his own—

Of course, Khalid thinks, and is amazed he didn’t think of it sooner. Of course, he thinks, and pulls off the jacket, and pulls out the knife he always keeps strapped to his left calf. He turns the jacket over, and the seam of the inner lining is stitched tight, but he slices it open easily, and out falls a folded-up bit of parchment, plain as anything.

The last lesson, he thinks wryly, as he unfolds it:

_My son,_

_Your uncle’s death was no accident. Be cautious when traveling. Be cautious around Gloucester men._

_You will have to make your own allies—but if you are ever desperate for a favor, speak my name to Judith Daphnel. Speak it to no one else, and do not tell her where I live now. She will help you, if she is the woman I remember._

_Do not write me. There are too many eyes on the Throat these days, too many messengers being shot down, and the risk of a letter falling into the wrong hands is too great._

_This is all the armor I can offer, poor though it is._

_You are cleverer than I was, which is good. You’ll need to be._

_Burn this after reading._

She didn’t even sign her name. Khalid checks both sides—there is nothing it else. He reads it again, and pauses on the name _Judith_ to properly memorize it. Then he reads it a third time, running his finger slow under _my son_ , under _cleverer than I was_.

He wants to keep it. What he wants—suddenly, stupidly, violently—is to write her a letter. _You only ever do what I tell you not to do_ , he can hear her chiding, and he smiles crookedly. Of course he does.

But gods. Something happened to her here, and he never asked what it was. Probably she had been telling him the whole time, in her oblique way—this is how you you’ll guard yourself, this is how you’ll hide your claws—but he hadn’t put it together, not yet. He had to put it together. In Almyra she was a queen. What had she been here?

He could write her, Khalid thinks. He could send a messenger over the Eamon Gap, a trusted one. It wouldn’t be any riskier than his coming here in the first place, and he’s sorely tempted. But Claude von Riegan, he decides, isn’t the kind of guy who would ignore his mother’s wishes. 

So he doesn’t write a letter, and he doesn’t keep hers. He drops it into the lamp on his desk, and lets it burn until it’s all ash. And then he lingers there a while longer—opening a window, staring out over the manor’s courtyard, staring hard into the darkness beyond.

The trees, he thinks, are just as tall as the books said they’d be. Taller, even. And with the window open, and the lamp at the window starting to smoulder, it’s becoming cold as any desert night. So he shrugs the jacket back onto his shoulders, torn lining and all, and allows himself one last shiver.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic now has a sequel, for anyone who wants more: ["Deer Among Cattle"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23832982)


End file.
